16 IN-DEPTH

District 66 students are 72.97 percent white, according to data compiled by West-side Community Schools. This is a product of a history of segregation in Omaha.

As stated in title, Kenneth French’s dissertation, “African Ameri-cans predominantly reside in North Omaha, Hispanics in South Oma-ha, and Whites and Asians in the suburbs of western Omaha.”

French is referring to Omaha in modern terms, but their description ap-plies to the past as well. As per the Nebraska State Historical Society, during the mid 1960s many African Americans began losing their jobs as packing plants closed across Omaha. At the same time, banks, real estate and insurance companies refused to serve African Americans anywhere but in North Oma-ha, effectively trapping them there. This is known as redlining. White popula-

tions shifted to central and western Omaha and many Hispanics moved South. Near the western edge of Omaha, a new district was formed, District 66.

The white populations of the city began attending the three schools that formed District 66 in the late 1940s as they were closest to them. During this time, racism was institutionalized as the Jim Crow Laws were still in place.

Over time, segregation became less systematic as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. Even though segregation officially ended, many people still held prejudiced attitudes, and Omaha was not going to reverse the racially divided neighborhoods. Since Omaha stayed so segregated, the schools and school districts reflected this.

As reported by the Nebraska Department of Education, Omaha North High School is nearly 45 percent African American and South High School is al-most 78 percent Hispanic. These numbers reflect the prolonged segrega-tion in Omaha. The large number of white people in District 66 can be at-tributed to the history of Omaha and its systematic and habitual racism.

SAM COHENMANAGING EDITOR

What are your opinions on the lack of diversity at Westside?

“It would be nice to have a greater representation of teachers and stu-dents as well, to represent the community in large. But I know there is a shortage, for teachers in minorities, so that’s an issue.”

How do you feel about being the only African American teacher at Westside?

“I didn’t realize it coming in, but it would be nice to have a little bit more diversity to represent what I see as a student population.”

How do you think that diversity affects students, positively or negatively?

“Positively. Just to represent what you see in our society. Just in Omaha alone, it’d be nice to have the same representation as far as staff and students.”

Q&A with art instructor Dana RoseDo you think it is important for our school to val-ue diversity both for faculty and students?

“I do, absolutely. I think valuing diversity can mean a bunch of different things as far as even having it incorporated in the curriculum and hav-ing all different races or denominations represented in how we teach.”

How do you think Westside could improve on this?

“I think it’s a problem that there’s a shortage of minority teachers. So maybe there could be some sort of recruitment to encourage students to go into the field of teaching in order to get that of representation.”

Q&A Conducted by Emily Kutler

Segregation’s StoryHow Omaha’s divided neighborhoods came to be

19%

22%

59%

YesnoI don’t know

do you believe Westside is a safe environ-ment for people of all races/ethnicities/

cultures?

93%

4%3%

do you have friends at westside who are minorities?

4 NEWS

money talkS (LOudly)Local businesses report disruptive students

Seniors Emma Dirks, Madison Barger, Kati LeFebvre, Mason Snover and Kalan Ferate visit Pets-R-Us in Rockbrook Village on Sunday, Nov 14 for their Marketing 2 class. Photo courtesy of Katie Harmon

Senior students in Marketing 2, a business and leadership course, have partnered with real businesses from the the Westside community. Business instructors Katie Harmon and Sar-ah Schau initiated these partnerships with five local businesses: Planet Sub, Dunkin’ Donuts, Dynamic Fitness, Pets-R-Us and Score Vision. Every marketing section works on a different project depending on which business they’re working with. Students meet in class with busi-ness contacts to discuss new ideas that can help the business grow.

“I think the greatest benefit of partnering with these businesses is the authentic learning,” Schau said. “Students get to apply what they learn in class to the real world.”

This is the first time entire classes have part-nered with Omaha businesses, but after less than two months of coordination, students have sold ads, created promotional plans, conducted market research, and even made live sales calls.

“The students have total freedom in coming up with ideas,” Schau said. “They propose their ideas and then either get feedback or start to im-plement them, but they have to abide by the rules of the business.”

A specific example of the mutual benefits of these partnerships is the work one class has done with Dunkin’ Donuts, a new franchise location on 90th and Center. According to Schau, students conducted a survey of over 300 students and staff members. The class analyzed the results and

suggested a promotional plan. The business pur-chased ads in The Lance and also solidified the student discount at Dunkin’ Donuts.

DJ Reezac, a local businessperson involved in the ScoreVision partnership and a Westside alum-nus, said “I’ve been blown away with how eager and professional the Marketing 2 students have been.”

Reezac, a former Marketing student said he realizes that there are challenges that come along with these partnerships.

“We’re talking about real-life dollars and get-ting someone to write a check for a large amount is difficult,” said Reezac. “The major challenge is students overcoming the disappointment of po-tential customers repeatedly saying no.”

“All of the students have come up with some really great stuff,” Schau said, “I’ve even had oth-er businesses contact me wanting to work with our Marketing 2 students.”

Ethan Jasa, a Marketing 2 student, is a member of the class that is partnered with ScoreVision. Jasa said he has made sales calls and worked on scoreboard ads.

“I want to pursue a career in business, specif-ically selling,” Jasa said. “This partnership has helped me understand how selling works in the real world.”

Many students who take Marketing 2, like Jasa, have an interest in going into the business field in the future and maybe even majoring in marketing.

“Thanks to these internships, I think I’ll have an advantage over the competition in the future,” Jasa said.

Long lines of middle schoolers fill Dunkin’ Donuts at 90th and Center Wednesday after-noons. Only a few blocks away is Westside Middle School, which has an early dismiss-al. This causes hordes of students to swarm Dunkin’ Donuts, Planet Sub and Smoothie King in the recently opened Loveland Centre strip mall.

This year, middle school students have been loitering and disrupting the businesses there. Some of the trouble started earlier this year when students were throwing footballs in the parking lot and the ball was hitting cars. The police were called during this incident. David Stiles, co-owner of Planer Sub, has no-ticed disrespectful behavior especially in his restaurant.

“This year started out kind of rough,” Stiles said. “They’ll bring products from other stores in here because we have a bigger space.”

On a recent Wednesday, Dunkin’ Donuts had the most students and noise compared to the sur-rounding stores. The food in Dunkin’ Donuts is cheaper than the food in the surrounding restau-rants which contributes to the greater number of students.

“The noise level gets a little crazier but they’re kids” said Dunkin’ Donuts employee Ashley Krecklow.

The situation at Smoothie King has been simi-lar to the one at Dunkin’ Donuts.

“The only problem is the noise level,” said Smoothie King employee Wes McCann. “They come in, buy their drink, and leave most of the time.”

The problems have been brought to the atten-tion of Westside Middle School, and Principal Russ Olsen made sure to inform the parents of the situation.

“I sent out a PSA in our newsletter letting par-ents know that there were concerns about students loitering, and I think it started a proactive conver-sation,” Olsen said. “A few parents thanked me, except we can’t do much to solve the problem from the school side.”

While the Loveland Centre may be a new issue this year, it isn’t the first time Olsen has received reports of students behaving similarly at other businesses.

“In years past, we’ve had the same thing going on at Arby’s and Taco Bell across the street,” Ol-sen said. “We [at WMS] just want to help students make good decisions.”

Employees at Loveland Centre are also try-ing to help students make better decisions.

“I try to help out the kids as much as possible. I try to be on the even side of everything,” Kreck-low said.

Planet Sub has tried to get a return to nor-malcy ever since the trouble started earlier this year.

“We’ve put some new practices in place, and it seems to have settled down a bit,” Stiles said. “I sit out here and monitor them, and if they get wild I say something and they tend to get scared and run.”

One of the new rules is seating and restrooms are for paying customers only.

Security guards have also been hired by Loveland Centre to help monitor and control some of the mayhem. The guards are no longer allowed in Dunkin’ Donuts because employees there feel they can handle the students better

themselves.One thing all the businesses can agree on is

that the students bring in good money, especially during such a slow time of day.

“They bring in lots of money,” Krecklow said. “We sell a lot more doughnuts and frozen hot chocolate than we normally do.”

STEVEN SIMONNEWS EDITOR

NICHOLAS VINCENTINISTAFF WRITER

Westside Middle School students interact with each other after school at Dunkin’ Donuts. Photo by Lili Fogland*Photo was blurred to protect students’ identity.

GOOD FOR BUSINESSMarketing students learn from local businesses

Orchestra is commonly associated with play-ing classical music like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. While this can be true, a small group of orchestra players in Westside are dedicated to playing more than just that. Warrior Core Orchestra doesn’t play just classical music. They play contemporary, rock, pop and jazz.

Warrior Core is a new club at WHS whose mission is to give members the opportunity to see a new perspective on music. As of right now, there are ten members, but more are ex-pected to join. There has already been an ad-dition of a few more members after a recent concert on Oct 24.

“I joined because I enjoy playing the vio-lin,” freshman Tyler Williams said, “[it] was different than your classical music.”

The name Warrior Core, jokingly called Supplement String Quartet, was created by string teachers Viktoria Matheson and Lanny Stutheit. Matheson teaches strings at elementa-ry schools in the Westside district, while Lan-ny Stutheit is the strings teacher for WMS and WHS.

“We started Warrior Core to show the stu-dents a different perspective,” Matheson said.

Warrior Core started when Matheson went to the American String Teachers Association Convention and met Mark Wood, who is one of the pioneers of alternative orchestras.The idea formed when Mark Wood questioned the teachers about how they are choosing music

FEATURE 11

MARYAM AKRAMOVASTAFF WRITER

that is appealing to all the students. “How many of my students are actually go-

ing to be classical musicians?” Matheson said. “Probably not a lot, but do I have people who realize there are other genres of strings playing that they are not aware of.

Stutheit said he had a similar view as the reason for starting Warrior Core.

“We felt as if there was music out there that we didn’t get to typically play in orchestra,” Stutheit said. “There are a lot of different styles of music and this [club] allows us to ex-pose the students to different styles of string playing.”

The club meets Tuesdays and Thursdays af-ter school in the orchestra room.

Matheson said she feels that Warrior Core has many benefits, such as helping players per-form better in class as well as letting the mem-bers explore a different style of playing and becoming involved and a flexible schedule.

“I just really wanted to get more into mu-sic,” said Lydia Spier, a junior who also plays violin, “[and I want to] play [it] and do things a little bit more my way.”

A flexible schedule is one of the main ben-efits of Warrior Core. Anyone not able to join this semester, can join second semester. The founders agreed that most of the students are busy, but they still should be able to join.

“It’s meant to be a flexible group that you come and go as your schedule allows,” said Matheson. “People are busy. I get it.”

One of the goals for the club is to be able to play at a Stormchasers baseball game at the

Stranger stringsOrchestra students explore alternative music

Freshman Adrianna Gower plays her cello during Warrior Core practice on Nov. 10. Photo by Maryam Akramova

end of the school year. The other students said they hope to also be able to play at other plac-es, such as retirement homes and recreational places.

Warrior Core is described by members as funky, fantastic, amazing, different and ener-getic.

“Warrior Core Strings is a group that plays an alternative kind of music that reaches stu-dents that may not go a classical route in mu-sic, but may want to continue in an alternative route,” Matheson said.

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